1. Field of the Invention
Primary—Digital Image Compression
Secondary—Digital Data Compression
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital Image Compression is a method of reducing the amount of numerical data required to describe a digitally acquired image. The advantage is that the resources (e.g., time, computer memory storage) required to transmit image from one location to another, or to store the image, is reduced.
One type of image compression algorithm allows for an identical copy of the original image to be reconstructed upon data decompression (called “lossless compression” since no data from the original image is irretrievable). Another type of algorithm does not recreate the original image identically, but the human viewer is unable to discern any difference between the original and the reconstructed images (called “lossy compression” since some data from the original image is lost forever).